Quote Originally Posted by translations.nm.ru
Nothing like that could happen in Russia, by the way. I won't insists that we don't have dialectal differences (it all depends on one's definition of a dialect, after all), but even if we have dialects, they are less of a dialect than your dialects are
I totally agree. Russian is way more uniform, than English. I'm from Ukraine, but when I visited Russia no one could actually guess where I am from, due to the lack of distinct 'akanie' or 'okanie' (or fricative "г"). They could probably tell that I'm not a Muscovite or inhabitant of Vologda (or whatever), but that's it.
I think it's true for many Russians. You can probably tell that they are not from somewhere (from Mocsow, from Nothern regions), but it's hard to actually pinpoint their place of residence. Also there are plenty of people in any region who don't have a specific 'regional' accent, but speak a standard 'TV' Russian.